Category: Tech news

 ZIRX is an on-demand valet startup that charges $15 a day to park your car (and bring it back to you)… And it just raised $6.4 million from Norwest Venture Partners and Trinity Ventures to make parking in San Francisco a whole lot easier. Read More

 TechCrunch Disrupt, a thrice-yearly event where they drag me, the founder of TechCrunch, out like Lenin’s embalmed body to show I’m still around, is but a week away. And if anything will shock me back to life, it’ll be Travis Kalanick, the controversial CEO of the controversial startup (if a company can still be called a startup after raising $1.5 billion in venture… Read More

 So I guess TechCrunch has a new boss.
As first reported by Re/code’s Kara Swisher, and confirmed by AOL, Susan Lyne is stepping down from her role as CEO of AOL’s brand group, which includes sites like Engadget, Joystiq, and, yes, TechCrunch. Read More

 A newly released study executed by the Sunlight Foundation of hundreds of thousands of comments submitted to the FCC by the public found that the vast majority spoke in favor of net neutrality. The group estimates that “less than 1 percent of comments were clearly opposed to net neutrality.” There is wiggle room in the data, given that some people are not clear writers, and could… Read More

On this week’s Road To Disrupt, we’re back with Bitcovery and Hammer & Chisel and revisit their on-stage Startup Battlefield presentation at Disrupt SF 2013. Read More

3DHubs, a 3D printer matching service, has raised a $4.5 million Series A to help bring their local 3D printing system to the world. The service, which allows you to find and order 3D prints from printers in your area, is similar to other services like MakeXYZ and 3DLt but is already available overseas. Founded by former 3D Systems employees Brian Garret and Bram de Zwart, the site was one of… Read More

 Google today announced that it is expanding its research around quantum computing and that it has hired UC Santa Barbara’s (UCSB) John Martinis and his team — one of the most prolific research groups in this area — to work on new quantum processors based on superconducting electronics. Researchers in Martinis’ lab were among the first to use this technique back in 2008. Read More

We’re less than a week away from this year’s Disrupt Hackathon, and are delighted to announce the judges & API workshops. I, along with TechCrunch Startup Battlefield Editor, Sam O’Keefe, will be your Hackmaster and host for the weekend. Judges In years past, our judges have served as combination of part-bloodhound, part-iron curtain, separating the wheat from the… Read More

 Microsoft is expected to release a technical preview of Windows 9 on September 30. So if you were looking forward to getting your paws on the code, you have only four weeks left to wait. That is, if you are not a key Microsoft partner. According to NeoWin’s Brad Sams, Microsoft is currently providing some partners with access to the operating system ahead of the public. That’s not… Read More

 Did you just get your credit card replaced after the Great Target Fiasco of 2013?
Don’t get too used to that new card. It’s starting to look like it’s that time again.
Home Depot has confirmed that it’s investigating some “unusual activity” with regards to its customer data, and the consistently spot-on Brian Krebs is saying that it’s a credit card breach. Read More

 Apple has released an official statement in response to accusations that its iCloud storage system might be somehow behind the recent leak of a large number of nude or otherwise private celebrity photos, whose victims included Jennifer Lawrence. In the statement Apple denies any breach within its systems, but does concede that celebrity accounts were compromised by attackers using standard… Read More

 Every day this week we are giving away a ticket to Disrupt San Francisco. We’ll announce the giveaways in various locations, so make sure you follow our social accounts for tips. You can earn extra entries to the contest by sharing the giveaway link with friends and following our social accounts. Today’s contest ends on 9/3 at noon PST (24 hours from now), but we’ll… Read More

 The world is changing at an increasingly rapid pace. In the past, experts with spreadsheets and econometric models or social scientists with subscale studies and linear models may have been useful. These so-called experts extrapolated from what came before, but as the rate of change has increased, looking to the past is often no longer meaningful — especially in a world driven by new… Read More

 Wireless speaker company Sonos has updated its entire streaming system to allow for nearly wireless speaker connectivity. Until today, the only way to connect an entire home to the same speaker network was to use something called a Bridge, a $50 box that connected directly to your router via Ethernet. Now, however, the system can connect directly to your wireless router, bypassing the… Read More

 Samsung is trying to add some additional cachet to its brand with a self-produced line of high-end audio accessories, dubbed “Level” by the Korean electronics giant. The Level series includes three different types of headphones, including an in-ear model, an on-ear version and an over-ear variety. The Level In, Level On and Level Over each offer a different experience, but they… Read More